Pick em

What pick em is

Pick em is a daily fantasy format built on player projections. The operator shows a number for a player's stat in an upcoming game, passing yards or receptions for instance, and you pick whether the player will finish more or less than it. You combine two or more of those picks into one entry, and if they hit, the entry pays a fixed multiple of what you put in; some entry types pay a reduced amount when one pick misses. The multipliers are set by the operator and shown before you enter. PrizePicks and Underdog are two of the products built around it.

Because each pick is a call on a single player statistic, pick em looks a lot like a player prop, and because several picks are combined into one entry that pays only if they hit, it shares its structure with a parlay. What keeps it in the DFS family is that it is framed as a fantasy contest on player performance.

An example

A hypothetical two-pick entry: you take more on a receiver's projected receptions and less on a running back's projected rushing yards. Both calls are made in the morning, before either game kicks off. If the receiver clears his number and the running back falls short of his, the entry pays at the multiplier shown when you entered. If either pick misses, a standard entry pays nothing. Nothing you do after kickoff changes the result; the rest of the afternoon is watching.

How Speed Survivor is different

Speed Survivor is not a projection product. There is no line on a player and no multiplier: you answer twelve yes-or-no questions during the game, one about every five minutes of game clock, and you are ranked against everyone else in the contest. Being right earns speed points and being fast earns more, cuts thin the field, and the survivors split a pool funded by the entries.

Pick em rewards the research you do before kickoff; Speed Survivor rewards how you read the game while it is on. How it works has the full walkthrough, and Speed Survivor vs PrizePicks and Speed Survivor vs Underdog compare the two side by side.